As the Capital Improvement Program Manager, CTP will work on projects that include track rehabilitation, replacement of viaducts and projects to upgrade traction power. CTP will also help develop project plans in preparation for future funding.

Under the previous agreement, CTP assisted with the Brown Line capacity expansion project, renovation of the Howard station on the Red Line and power upgrades to the Dan Ryan branch of the Red Line.

Chicago Transit Partners is a joint venture of three separate companies specializing in construction, engineering and design management. They are DMJM+Harris Inc. and Consoer, Townsend Envirodyne Engineers Inc., both of Chicago, and Kenny Construction Co. of Wheeling, Ill.

In addition, CTA's board approved a contract that creates a collection of 13 vendors that are capable of providing operations and maintenance support for the agency's information technology systems as needs are identified.

These vendors were selected to address a range of services from maintaining and upgrading individual pieces of hardware and software to fully-managed service solutions.

The board's action results in the second pool of pre-qualified vendors to be added to the CTA Technology Resource Acquisitions for Programs of Regional Transit (TRANSPORT) program, which is designed to offer a broad range of services and solutions that will be readily available to respond to CTA's IT needs.

In January, the Board approved a group of vendors qualified to provide the CTA with communications infrastructure, engineering design, development, implementation and integration services.

Other TRANSPORT categories are currently being negotiated and will include independent testing, validation, verification and evaluation; application engineering and software development; and project management office and support services.

The pilots will include a combination of dedicated bus-only lanes that take bus riders out of car congestion, technology to time traffic signals so that buses get more green lights, and platforms that allow riders to “level-board” the bus quickly as they would a subway.

The MetroHealth Line was developed as part of a naming rights agreement between RTA and The MetroHealth System, executed earlier this year, to rebrand the No. 51 family of routes. Those routes have the second highest bus ridership after the HealthLine.